


Purgatory

by TheBraillebarian



Series: Schrödinger's Labyrinth [1]
Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Debt, Drugs, Flashbacks, Gen, Hospitals, Physical Therapy, Surgery, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:28:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27696956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBraillebarian/pseuds/TheBraillebarian
Summary: No one is more surprised to wake up after being hit by a train than Melmord.
Series: Schrödinger's Labyrinth [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2161302
Comments: 18
Kudos: 13





	Purgatory

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know how this happened but I’m confident it is somehow [HeyMurphy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeyMurphy/pseuds/HeyMurphy) and Agaricales fault. Especially Agaricales for making this guy so compelling!

Melmord wakes screaming, or so it seems to him. In reality it’s a feeble whine dribbling from cracked lips not unlike the pain tears slithering between bruised eyelids. In his head there is nothing but a roar, metal thundering, his shadow stretching in a light rising up to swallow him. He thrashes, a twitch of the fingers, and whines and cries until someone feeds more drugs into his system, returning him to blessed empty equilibrium. 

...

There’s a certain level of pain no amount of painkillers can touch. He feels it with every indrawn breath, stretching his alien skin under the dressings, itching at his organs. There’s a tv on the opposite wall that remains blank in lieu of the pain. Melmord shapes his existence around the feel and pull, too fogged and weak to consider boredom. Intermittently someone comes in to wipe the tears and snot off his face, change the bedpan, check the mess of him under the compression wraps holding him together. He has awareness enough not to look. 

...

It’s the dim monitor lights using his eyes to lance him through the brain that finally rouses him. Where his body is heavy and numb even with the unrelenting itch of hurt, this is agony, pure and hot. The lights swim and pulse and he’d puke if there was anything in him. Everything lurches around him. After days, weeks perhaps, of silence, he howls. It splits him open and the terror, the total wrongness of it all fills him to overflowing. 

“What have you done to me?” he shrieks as a hooded nurse enters, unbothered. “What have you done to me?!”

Nothing eases the pain in his head but whatever goes in the line to his veins drapes him in lethargy. Melmord whimpers and mewls alone in the dark. 

...

“Glad to have you back with us,” Charles says the next day, face neutral. 

Melmord watches the blank tv. 

“I’ve taken the liberty to draw up some papers for you. There is a non disclosure agreement you’ll need to sign before leaving the grounds. You can, ah, take your time with that.”

Son of a bitch almost gets a smile out of him. 

“There is also the matter of your medical coverage. Your insurance did cover the funeral costs. We can arrange for footage of the ceremony to be brought over if you’d like. The other expenses,” a vague gesture at the room, the bed, his patchwork body, “are outside of your coverage.”

Through the pain and fog in his head Melmord can hear a ringing in his ears. 

“I’ve drafted an employment contract that you may find beneficial given your current circumstances. Feel free to look it over and get back to me.”

A manilla folder comes to rest on the wheeled tray table beside his bed. Charles stands. 

“I’m glad we had this talk. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.”

He leaves and Melmord chokes down anything he might have said in another life. They both know why Charles came in person and the answer he will receive. 

When he can move his arm enough Melmord signs everything without reading a single word. 

...

Time bleeds into a mash of nurses changing bandages, nameless surgeons checking on his progress, lung capacity tests and physical therapy that strains cries from his trembling lips. He can’t move much under his own power. Hooded people stretch and pull at him in silence until he sees them in the nightmares that drag him into screaming wakefulness. In his dreams they hold him and turn him to face into the roaring light just before it slams him to pieces. Sometimes, in the instant before waking, he sees Charles in the center, sword glittering red in the painful brilliance. 

...

His first meal is a thin salty broth. It tastes like heaven being spooned into his mouth. When it comes back it’s still good. He laughs hopelessly as a nurse wipes brown off his chin. 

The day he can keep down a cube of orange jello Melmord lets out the most wantn moan he’s ever heard. The second bite is just as good. 

...

Dignity is for the living. If it means getting out of that damn bed even for a minute, he can handle a stranger holding his dick to piss and wiping his ass. They took the catheter out and he can wiggle his toes. It’s something. 

...

He is becoming a fan of daytime tv talk shows. It is perhaps the most degrading thing in this purgatory. 

...

Like a dog trapped all day in its master’s home, he finds that he looks forward to the walks. They’re short at first, shuffling and slow with a nurse proping him up. It makes his stomach hurt but knowing he can make it one circuit of the drab nurses station is thrilling. He sees other patients in different rooms and wonders what sins have led them here. Sleep drags him under almost as soon as he is settled back in bed and for once Melmord is too exhausted to dream. 

...

A routine settles around him like a shroud. Physical therapy, increasingly longer walks in the halls, wound dressing and dull tv blessedly interrupted by meals. Nobody comes to visit. 

And at last, when all the lights are low and the night nurse has done the rounds, he looks. Fingers shake as they undo the hospital smock’s cheap shoulder buttons. It’s a trainyard of stitches holding puffy red skin together. Some spots are still yellow where disinfectant stained the skin. His torso is an alien landscape and he hurries to cover it again. After puking into the trashcan he hits the call button. The nurse looks at his pale bloodless face and puts a sedative in the IV without comment.

...

When he can feed himself and walk steadily on his own and begins making passes at the staff, they let Melmord go. He struts in his textured socks from greenish linoleum to blood red carpet and freezes. The texture is springy under his feet and the color is...the color is... 

If he goes to the roof, to that spot on the tracks, is it still red? What of him is still on the ground out there?

A gloved hand gently tugs him away from the wall, steadying his shivering. There is a hollow sound far away like breath in a massive throat. 

“You’ll get used to it,” the hood says. 

His room is small and decorated in reds and blacks. No window. The door locks from outside when it shuts behind him. There will be hospital staff to check on him tomorrow. Tonight there’s an employee welcome packet on the black painted nightstand and new clothes in the closet, all his size. 

Melmord sits on the bed staring at the cold stone wall for a long time. 

...

It’s the same kind of shirt he used to wear, salmon pink, still his favorite color in spite of everything. The medalion he hangs over his head is the one he was wearing when...when... Soneone has scrubbed the blood out of its grooves, even buffed away the scratches, but it’s dented on one side. He buttons the shirt a little higher than before just to be sure. 

The face in the mirror hasn’t changed. Of it all he thinks that might be the worst thing. How can so much be tucked away by a few millimeters of cloth? A smile? He wants to put a hole through the glass, throw himself back on the other side where they left him in pieces. Instead he tucks his collar and slips the medalion under his shirt. It leaves a burning mark of cold, numb and weird where it lies between burgeoning scars and skin, until it warms and he can’t feel it anymore.

“Today’s the first day of the rest of your life,” he says to his reflection. 

Melmord turns on his heel and heads for work. 

**Author's Note:**

> I yell about this show and sometimes post art at [metalrat](https://metalrat.tumblr.com/).
> 
> In memory of [Jim](https://m.youtube.com/user/hobestobe/videos). You probably would have given the doctors hell if you had the chance and given me crap for this. :D I’ll have another beer at the tracks for you sometime.


End file.
